Conservatives twice ignore regulator’s warning on use of misleading ‘fitness for work’ figures

The Conservative party has continued to use misleading figures about “fitness for work” assessments, despite an independent watchdog finding they were potentially misleading.

The Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) has been forced to contact the party to draw its attention to its decision, after Disability News Service told the regulator how the Conservatives had twice flouted its findings.

OSR concluded on 7 June that the repeated use of the figures by prime minister Rishi Sunak (pictured) over the last year “had the potential to mislead”.

The prime minister had first used the work capability assessment (WCA) figures in his main Conservative party conference speech last October, comparing the proportion of those now found not fit for work (65 per cent) after an assessment with the figures in 2011 (21 per cent).

He repeated these figures in March in an interview with the Sunday Times.

And he repeated them again in a major speech on social security at the Centre for Social Justice in April.

Then, in a press release issued on 8 June, more than 24 hours after the OSR ruling, the party used the figures yet again, this time claiming people were “three times more likely to be assessed as not fit for any work than they were a decade ago”.

Three days later, the figures appeared in the Conservative manifesto, in a bid to justify the party’s claim that there had been an “unsustainable rise in benefit claims” by working-age disabled people.

But OSR had concluded that the use of the figures “does not reflect the complexities of the data or take account of any changes to the benefit system or the criteria for allocating to this group”.

When DNS informed the regulator that the party’s manifesto had ignored its ruling, an OSR spokesperson said: “Manifestos fall outside the Office for Statistics Regulation’s remit so while we monitor the content to pre-empt statistics that may be used in public debate, we cannot formally comment on their content.

“We are, however, able to intervene in claims from manifestos when they are referred to in public statements such as interviews or social media posts.”

After being shown the Conservative press release by DNS, he said OSR had “flagged the relevant page on our website” with “Conservative Party HQ”.

The Conservative party had failed to comment by 11am today (Thursday) on why the prime minister and his party had ignored the 7 June OSR decision.

The 2011 figures reflected the particular harshness of the WCA in its early years, before its most serious flaws were exposed.

It took years of research and activism by disabled people and allies to reveal the links between the WCA and hundreds, and probably thousands, of deaths of claimants, and to force DWP ministers to ease the harshness of the assessment process.

There were also five independent reviews of the WCA commissioned by DWP, which led to multiple improvements to the assessment.

These factors eventually made it less arduous to qualify for the employment and support allowance support group and avoid work-related conditions for those found not fit for work, although the assessment process is still deeply-flawed and continues to be linked to serious harm and deaths of claimants.

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